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Common Core Success Story

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Wednesday, March 26, 2014

More teachers and educators are speaking out about the Common Core State Standards and what they mean in classrooms and for students. Here are some of the best clips with links, excerpts and quotes from classroom teachers and administrators:

Letter: Common Core success story

By Lee Ann Wall, The News-Star (Monroe, LA)

March 25, 2014

"As an instructional assistant at Iota Middle School in Acadia Parish, it is my job to analyze student data and assist teachers with instructional planning and goal setting. Through the implementation of the Common Core State Standards at our school, I have seen huge positive gains in critical thinking, problem solving and perseverance in our students.

And,

"Students are writing in response to text in every content area at Iota Middle, including P.E. students are annotating text, locating details and support for their answers, in every content area also.

"Student discussions and critical analysis have improved schoolwide. Why? We teach the Common Core State Standards at Iota Middle which is not a prescribed curriculum. They are a set of standards allowing those of us closest to the students to make the best decisions about curriculum, instruction, resources and assessment to measure mastery.

"Whether I am meeting with parents from New Orleans and Baton Rouge or pre-service teachers at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, we all have the same desire to raise student academic standards in the state of Louisiana. Parents want the education improved for their children and future and current educators want to challenge the students.

"We need to continue to communicate and support both parents and educators with professional development on the Common Core State Standards. To paraphrase the words of Albert Einstein, we have to change to get different, higher, results in education in Louisiana."

"Little Harbour School's first- and third-grade teachers spoke of their shift to Common Core standards at Tuesday night's School Board meeting.

"Although two residents spoke against the use of Common Core during the public comment portion of the meeting, the teachers presented their methods and evidence of success.

"'I am so impressed by what they can do as first-graders,' board member Helene Mullaney said after the first-grade literacy presentation.

And,

"Through Common Core, the first-grade literacy curriculum has introduced more nonfiction, and the teachers all agreed the students have 'adjusted beautifully.' They have learned to identify and use text features to locate information and use those text features to learn how a nonfiction book is organized.

"In math, the third-graders have shifted to focus on providing evidence of their thinking to a greater extent. They are required to show their thinking process and often share it during group work.

"Mullaney said she believes that when children work together and see different methods to arrive at the same answers, it may teach them to 'respect diversity of opinion.'"

"Board member Ann Walker agreed and pointed out how much students truly enjoying sharing different ways of arriving at the same answer.

"'There's this common misconception that kids are being taught there's only one way to do things' board member Patrick Ellis said. 'I'm glad to see that you've shown kids use many different methods.'"

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Achieve has developed materials to help states, districts, and others understand the organization and content of the standards and the content and evidence base used to support the standards. Visit www.achieve.org/achieving-common-core.

If you find a news clip supportive of the Common Core, please send it to Chad Colby at ccolby@achieve.org.

Who We Are

Achieve is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit education reform organization dedicated to working with states to raise academic standards and graduation requirements, improve assessments, and strengthen accountability.